


Band Aids and Bouquets (I've known you your whole life)

by thelostrocketeer



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Age gap makes it underage, Angst, Family, M/M, Mates, Monologue, Stalker-ish!Derek, Young!Stiles, actual dialogue, baby!Stiles, dunnit?, in which I attempt to write something longer than two thousand words., that doesn't suck, waxing lyrical, young!Derek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 05:38:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelostrocketeer/pseuds/thelostrocketeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek is seven and his mother’s friend has just given birth.</p><p>A (mostly) canon-compliant (canon also coming from the novel On Fire.) retelling of How Derek Met Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Band Aids and Bouquets (I've known you your whole life)

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of this was stemmed from a post on tumblr where Stiles gives Derek a band aid at the station after the Hale House Fire, and it kinda.. got away from me? Anyway, I hope you like it. :)
> 
> Thank you [capl0cked](http://archiveofourown.org/users/capl0cked/pseuds/capl0cked), my sweet darling chicken of a beta. I ruff u.

Derek is seven and his mother’s friend has just given birth.

She passes him a rattle to give to the baby.

He puts it gingerly into its tiny little hands.

The baby looks unseeingly at him. Derek smiles.

His mind is filled with baby noises, a name that is too hard to pronounce and the smell of smoke and mushrooms as they head to his birthday party.

He forgets the name, and the noises, even the existence of the baby.

But the smell stays.

He gets a bicycle for his birthday.

 

X

 

Stiles is ten when they meet again.

It’s at the station and it’s eleven o’clock, way past his bedtime but he can’t be left alone at home, because he’s Stiles and his mother is in Virginia visiting her sister, and has just started collecting tiny white china with daintily painted flowers. His dad carried him from bed into the cruiser and he’d woken up halfway to the station, bleary eyed and snotty nosed.

“Daddy, what’s going on?”

“Hey, son, you’re awake,” says Mr Stilinski slowly. “Oh, it’s just- well, something bad happened, you see, and daddy’s gotta go down to the station and take some statements. You’ll sit in my office and be a good boy, won’t you?”

“Okay, will I get to play with the snow globe?” asks Stiles.

“Yeah... yeah, ‘course you can,” says his dad, one hand ruffling Stiles’ soft brown hair.

They pull up at the station, and there’s a lot of commotion, people and officers pacing up and down, the smell of something sour and sharp in the air. It’s the stench of smoke, but not the nice barbeque kind, Stiles realises with a start as he hold his dad’s hand and they walk down the corridor that leads to his office.

“Now you sit here and be quiet, okay?” his dad says again, when he opens up the office and sits Stiles down on the big turn-y chair.

Stiles nods and picks up the snow globe with the little dog and shakes it with a small smile.

It’s fun, for a while, until the while turns into an hour, and that hour turns into two.

Stiles looks at the clock on the desk and reads the numbers with a slight tint of pride. It’s one o’clock, says the clock. Stile is sleepy… and he’s so bored. He scoots off the turn-y chair and walks over to the door, peeking out through the smudged glass panel from behind the plastic shades. Seeing nobody in the corridor outside, he turns the doorknob and tiptoes out towards where he assumes his dad is.

As he walks, he hears the officers whispering urgently, words like _Child Services_ , _Laura and Derek_ , _fire_ , _mostly gone_ , _Peter Hale_ , _third-degree burns_ sneaking their way into his eager ears, when he sees a boy.

He’s sitting on a plastic chair, eyes downcast, a bunch of tissues clenched tightly in one fist. His black hoodie smells like smoke and sweat, even from all the way over here. He has dark hair and pale skin, and the beginnings of stubble on his cheeks. Stiles stands a few feet away and watches him quietly, at first.

“Are you Derek?” he’d askes, eventually.

“Go away, kid,” comes a soft reply. 

So Stiles does what any other ten year old with nothing to do would have done. He walks slowly, till he’s right next to the boy, and sits on the chair next to him.

“Hello, I’m Stiles. I was supposed to play with my dad’s snow globe in his office but I got bored. What’s wrong? Did you lose your favourite comic book? I lost mine once, but then my dad found it again, and then I wasn’t sad anymore. Maybe yours is just under the dresser in your room like mine was all along.

"Hey, have you seen the new Spider Man? I wanted to get it but my mom said I needed to clean up my room first, but I got distracted. I get distracted real easy, it makes my mom sad sometimes, so I try to be good and pay attention, but then it’s so hard and I can’t concentrate,” he says, finally stopping for breath. “Can you tell me what’s going on, please? Nobody will tell me, and it’s boring in my dad’s office. I want to go-“

“There was a fire,” says the boy slowly, “It was a big fire. Now, go away, kid.”

“Oh, if it was a fire, then why are we in the station? I thought the firemen took care of the fires? Sometimes I think I want to be a fireman, but then I think I’d like to be a policeman, just like my dad. But then I get distracted and want to build my own spaceship and fly to the moon. Scott says I have Attention Disorder... something- and that makes me think real fast about different things all the time. There’s a girl named Lydia in my class, she says my disorder thingy makes me annoying, and she made up a chant about it. It was kinda means, but I don’t care cause I’m a big boy, and Scott said that when girls make fun of you it’s becau- hey, hey what’s wrong?” says Stiles, finally noticing the drippy drops rolling off the sharp tip of the boy’s nose.

“Go away, kid,” repeats the boy after a few minutes, the words muttered out carefully. He sniffs and savagely wipes the tears off his face with the sleeve of his hoodie.

“Did you get burned? Is it an owie? ‘Cause I have a bandy, if you want it. It’s got Batman on it. We got it at the store because the normal bandies hurt when they get pulled off. This Batman one doesn’t, do you want me to help you put it on?” and this time, Stiles actually stops and waits for an answer.

The boy looks up, at him, finally. His nose is red and the whites of his eyes are tear stained around the green-y brown centre bits; the way Stiles’ got when he fell of the swings and broke his pinkie… and cried like a little girl. With cooties.

He blinks slowly and stares at Stiles. “Kid, how old are you?” he asks.

“I’m ten. How old are you?”

“I’m seventeen.”

“Wow, you’re old!” blurts out Stiles, before he can stop himself. “Uh, I mean, you’re older than me.”

The boy stares at Stiles some more, green-y brown eyes glinting, and suddenly they’re bright blue. Stiles gasps and blinks, but when he opens his eyes, the boys are normal again. He even has a small smile on his face, the thin curve not really reaching his eyes.

“How did you do that?!” exclaims Stiles. “I mean, your eyes were totally like green and then-“

His words are cut off half-way, because suddenly he is suspended in the air, his father’s strong hands holding him up.

“Hey there, buddy. What happened to staying in the office?” says Mr Stilinski, his voice tired and throat dry.

“I got bored, so I came out here. I made a friend! I think his name is Derek, but he won’t tell me what it really is. He told me there was a fire and then he-“

Stiles stops, remembering the older boy’s tears.

“It’s okay,” says the boy, standing up, suddenly. “Yeah, my name is Derek; it was nice meeting you, Stiles.”

“I’m sorry he was bothering you, Mr Hale,” says Stiles’ dad as he puts him down to shake Derek’s hand.

“It’s okay… It was… nice… to have some company,” says Derek, like each word requires careful forethought before leaving his mouth.

“Your sister will be out soon… I’m- sorry for your loss. Your mother was a good friend of my wife,” says the Sheriff carefully as well, his face grim. “Will you be okay?”

“Yeah... We will,” comes the slow, quiet reply.

“Alright then… time to get home, before you crash completely,” says the Sheriff, patting Stiles’ head. “Take care, Mr Hale.”

“Thank you, Sheriff.” says Derek.

While Stiles’ father turns and walk to the exit, Stiles tugs at the hem of Derek’s hoodie.

“Here,” he says, pulling out a Batman band aid from his jacket pocket. “This bandy is for the owie.”

Derek looks at the band aid, eyes flitting between the small hand holding it up and the small pair of brown eyes looking up at him expectantly.

“Thanks,” he says slowly, a small smile on his lips, this time lighting up the rest of his face. A real smile.

Stiles smiles and runs off after his father, pleased like something inside him is smiling.

It’s his heart that’s smiling, ten year old Stiles decides later as he falls asleep, weary from the day’s excitement.

 

X

 

Derek is nineteen, and Stiles is twelve.

He’s just passing by, visiting Peter, but he sees him.

He remembers, the kid from two years ago.

Derek watches the boy standing next to his mother’s hospital bed.

His hands are shaking as he reaches out to stroke her hair- then stops short and pulls his hand away.

Derek leaves, the knot in his chest taking up far too much room.

 

X

 

The next time is at the hospital, and Stiles is thirteen.

His chest is imploding. Like he can’t breathe, or like nothing is alright, and nothing will ever be alright again. He runs out of the room, chest heaving, bile rising in his throat. His legs are weak, like he’s just run a marathon. They wobble like jelly and it takes him too much effort to keep standing, so he gropes blindly to hold on to something stable.

Stiles is thirteen, and his mother is dead.

Her heart rate monitor flat lined three minutes ago. Stiles stands outside the room under the bright fluorescent ceiling lights, one hand braced on the wall as to keep balance; the other hand fisting into his red hoodie, trying to calm himself down. His breaths come out laboured and shallow, there’s not enough oxygen reaching his brain and he can feel the headache starting to thunder through-

And he can feel the tears coming now, and he knows he can cry; that it’s alright to, but the hot tears sear childish lines of embarrassment down his face anyway.

His father is inside the room; body pressed onto the limp form of his mother, stopping her body from cooling down, his tears dripping onto her face while the nurse stands off to the side, waiting for permission to come closer and switch off the machines.

And right now, all Stiles wants is to curl up into a ball, so he does that, his knees giving way and his body thumping dully right there in the corridor.

Scott’s mom is suddenly there, next to him, her hand rubbing circles into his back. Scott sits on the floor opposite him, a look of horror evident on his puppy-like face. He can only run his hand through his dark curls and looks at his mother for advice, because thirteen year old boys aren’t the best when it comes to comforting their friends.

Stiles tears keep coming fast and hot and soon his hoodie is a dark red, almost the colour of blood, soaking it all up, the cool dampness a constant reminder that _this has actually happened._ A girl with matted dirty blonde hair in the room at the end of the corridor peeks out at him, but he really doesn’t care, because for once, no matter how much he wishes he could distract himself, he just can’t. His mind is just full of the shrill bleep of the heart rate monitor, the wailing of his father, the thunder in his ears that seem to magnify all the other sounds that he just _doesn’t want to hear._

He remembers his mother’s unfinished last words.

He tells himself to breathe, and concentrates on the soothing circles of warmth Mrs McCall is rubbing into his back.

And then he throws up.

It’s nearly two hours before his breathing has somewhat evened out and his tear ducts seem to have stopped working, although his heart seems to squeeze itself into an impossible shape every five minutes. Mrs McCall has taken away his soiled hoodie and shirt and brought him a clean one to change into, one of Scott’s. She tells him everything will be okay, and hugs him tight in the way only a mother can and that makes him feel even emptier inside. He doesn’t say anything, except for a clipped thank you for the change of clothes.

He feels nothing but numbness and the gymnastic routine of his heart.

Scott brings him a cup of hot chocolate as he sits absolutely still on a waiting chair close to Mrs McCall’s desk, save for the slow rise and fall of his ribcage. His mind is blank, now. His father is still inside the room, sitting next to the slowly cooling body, holding his dead wife’s hand, weeping silently in between bouts of confessions of love and anger and sadness.

Stiles knows because he went and looked. But he didn’t go in. _Couldn’t_ go in. Not… not yet.

“Hey. It’s… It’s gonna… It’s… It’ll be okay, okay?” says Scott softly.

Stiles doesn’t reply, rather just looks down at his shoes and sighs, fingers tightly gripping the hem of his borrowed shirt, till his knuckles take on a white tinge.

“I have to get some food, I’ll bring you some curly fries, okay?” tries Scott again.

He isn’t hungry but Stiles nods, not looking look up.

Scott bends down and hugs him awkwardly before walking to the elevators, almost upsetting the hot chocolate on the side table, but Stiles is thankful for the contact anyway. A few minutes pass and Stiles counts the number of squares there are on his chequered skateboarding shoes again.

“You’re Stiles, right?” comes a voice from somewhere above his head, disturbing his still, silent vigil. He looks up and sees a man in a leather jacket, his face aged from the last time they met. It takes him a moment, but he remembers. Unfortunately, he can’t treat him the way he does Scott, so he reluctantly, so very reluctantly opens his mouth to speak.

“Hello… Derek Hale, right?”

“That’s right. You’ve… had a growth spurt.” Derek speaks stiffly, polite and curt.

“Yeah, well. Puberty, man.”

“Yeah, I guess-” says Derek awkwardly. “Look, I heard about- I heard about what happened. I wanted to give you this.”

He digs around in his pocket and holds out a charred looking thing. It’s a necklace with a pendant on the end of it. The pendant is warped out of shape- it looks like it was once a heart and the soot stains Derek’s fingers. The black marks contrast against the pale skin on his large palm like kohl.

“This was your mother’s,” says the twenty year old carefully, now. “I think she must have left it with my mother before… before the fire. Your father said they were close. I guess that was true. I found it when we were clearing up the site. It’s not one of my mother’s.”

Yes, they were close. Stiles can remember the huge funeral that his mother had attended. She was wearing a black dress and a veiled hat. She had looked very sad and very beautiful, and ten year old Stiles had told her just that. Then she had picked him up, snuggled him close and told him she loved him.

Stiles picks up the necklace, his fist closing around it automatically. The metal is cool to the touch, hard and smooth due to the residual ash on its surface. He almost expects to feel some kind of electrical jolt, but there’s nothing.

“Thank you,” he whispers, for once at a loss of words.

“It’s no problem,” says Derek. He looks straight up above Stiles’ head and for a second, Stiles could swear that his eyes flash blue, “I was on the way to visit my uncle, anyway.”

Derek looks back at Stiles, his hazel eyes dilated, and sticks out a hand. Stiles shakes it with his free hand.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Derek says, repeating the words Stiles’ father once said to him, “You’ll be okay… in time.”

As Derek leaves, Stiles suddenly realises that the whole time he was talking to him, his heart had taken a time out from the organ gymnastics. He looks around to watch Derek go, but Derek is already gone, disappearing as quickly as he had appeared earlier.

Stiles will think about that later. But for now, he mourns.

 

X

 

Derek is twenty-three, Stiles is sixteen.

Stiles is best friends with the newly bitten wolf, Derek is wanted for murder.

Derek is in Stiles’ room.

He pins Stiles to the door, gets right up in Stiles’ personal space and threatens him.

Stiles threatens him right back.

Derek lets him go.

He play-snaps at the passing boy.

Inside he is panicking.

Stiles smells like Kate Argent, smoky; but also like-

_Mushrooms._

_  
_

X

 

Stiles is seventeen, and Derek is twenty-four.

He never says it out loud, but Stiles sees him glaring at him when he sits in one of the broken down train compartments in Derek’s Super-Secret Werewolf Lair when the wolves are busy trying to smash each other to pulp in lieu of what Derek calls “training”.

He feels Derek burning daggers into his skull when he’s eating/playing/doing anything at all with the pack.

In fact, he can still remember the dull ache from the time Derek slammed his face onto the steering wheel of his car.

He feels it in his bones. Derek hates him.

He visits his mother’s grave.

“Hey, mom,” he says to the smooth marble he leans against.

He picks idly at small weeds that grow at the foot of the tombstone.

“How’s… wherever you are? It’s been a while, I know. But I’ve been busy, school and stuff. Uh, I did better than I told you I expected. Dad’s proud. He offered to get me a new car… I said no. I made some new friends; you always said I’m better in a group, right? There’s Isaac, he’s cool. Erica… She’s well. She’s like Catwoman, mom. Boyd is like literally the only one with a clue about anything. Which is cool, too. And uh. I guess we hang out a lot?

“So, anyway, uh- mom. I kinda need to talk to you about something. I know I can go to dad for anything, but this topic is kinda awkward, cause well… There’s a guy. I don’t know him very well. I mean. Okay I know him quite well. I know you knew him, his name’s Derek. Yeah. That Derek. Hale. Uh- well. He’s twenty-four now. Uh, I’ve been spending a lot of time around him. At first it wasn’t… it wasn’t by my own choosing, he was just sorta… forced onto Scott and I, last year. Now he mostly broods around while I hang out with my friends… which I admit, sounds super creeper weird, but it’s a really, really long story, mom. But anyway, back to the point-“ his mouth is moving on its own now; there’s a bald patch at the left hand corner of his mother’s grave.

“I think he hates me. Sometimes, he looks at me like he wants to rip my head off, and I think he probably could. He threatens me with physical violence at least once a week. I don’t know if it’s just me. Maybe I’m just _that_ annoying? I do all kinds of things to try and be less annoying, but somehow it doesn’t make much of a difference, ‘cause he always seems to be this close to punching me. I even made him pizza once. I made the dough myself and everything! Maybe I’m just really off-putting. Or maybe I’m the odd one out, and my odd is just too odd? Does that even make sense?

“He doesn’t scare me that much, though. I think I’ve gotten used to it, because he hasn’t acted on his threats. Maybe he’s just waiting. Oh, God. What if he’s actually just planting these thoughts into my mind so that when he does attack me it’ll be like- out of the blue and I’ll be expecting it but not expecting it and oh my God this sucks. What really, really scares me is though… is how I feel about all of this. I am literally afraid of my own feelings. ‘Cause as much as he hates me...”

He takes a deep breath-

“I think I’m… you know… with him. Derek Hale. And I don’t want to lose him. ‘Cause there’s a huge possibility that that might happen. Even though he probably hates me, and wouldn’t mind gutting me myself, the idea of sucking on his face is more appealing than is decent, and the idea of losing him? I kinda makes me want to throw up. Throw up and then hide under a blanket and never come out again. It’s funny, because there was a time I didn’t mind if he died, but I guess a year of exposure has shown me a different side of him?

“He’s beautiful, mom. Like literally. He’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever known. He has this adorable little overbite and it makes him look like a bunny, which is funny given what he really is. And okay so I’ve been going on about his apparent secret life, but he’s a good person, mom, deep down. He cares, mom. About stuff. Like… wildlife preservation. He cares for Scott. He cares for Boyd and Isaac and Erica and Jackson, do you remember him? Whittemore, that’s right.

“The only person he doesn’t seem to care about… is me, and it sucks. And sometimes I think about the advice people give in the magazines, that no matter how nice someone is, if they don’t treat _you_ nice you should dump them and stuff; but then how can you dump what isn’t even yours? How can you forget when you don’t even remember anyway? I just want him to want me. I want him to tussle with me the way he does Scott; to confide in me the way he does Isaac and Boyd; heck, I just want him to tell me I’m being a bitch like he does to Erica. I just want him to notice me. To... I don’t know; stop acting as if I’m a speck of dust. I just want him to-“

“You’re not a speck of dust,” comes a voice from a few metres away, and Stiles nearly jumps out of his skin.

It’s Derek. He’s holding a bouquet of flowers, his jacket collar up, his face a picture of ludicrous surprise.

“You’re not a speck of dust, Stiles,” he repeats, this time his feet carrying him towards the white tombstone and the pale gaping boy.

“How long- how much did you hear?” asks Stiles.

“The… whole thing,” says Derek slowly as his feet crunch through dried leaves on his way to Stiles’ side.

He drops to his knees before the boy and puts the bouquet down gently, eyes wide.

“What. Did you. Mean,” Derek practically exhales, his voice a whisper.

“Uh- what do you mean what did I mean?” is the only cover up Stiles can think of right now.

“With the waxing lyrical and the… caring, and the-“ and he stops there, because words are not his strong point. His eyes are manic, looking at Stiles, searching his face for some kind of clue.

Stiles can’t think, can’t move. It’s like his tongue is made of lead and his throat is sealed with rubber cement. The silence is thick with the static electricity of words unsaid, allegations unmade. His mouth is open, he can feel it; his lips gaping open and close, open and close like a goldfish. A drowning goldfish.

“Do you… do you hate-“ he chokes on his words.

Derek’s face is pained, like Stiles has just slapped him across the face with a sledgehammer. Or the truth.

“How could… how could you say… that?” releases Derek slowly; like the words are a prong collar pulling on his throat.

“I don’t hate you, Stiles,” he continues to whisper; as if the words are a secret and he’s afraid the wind will tell them to someone else, “I’ve never hated you. How could you even… think that? How can you-“

“Because it’s true. Isn’t it?” cuts Stiles; slowly and determinedly, his voice rediscovered and his anger building.

“You hate me. It’s in the way you look at me, like I’m vile; like I’m the monster. You look at me like you’d like to rip my throat out, like I’m disgusting. It’s in the way you speak directly to the rest of them, but never to me, not if you can avoid it. It’s the way you stare at me, like you could shoot some weird Alpha laser beams into my head and make it explode and I don’t need super werewolf senses to know that you hate me, because it’s so obvious and I just can’t-“

“I don’t hate-"

“Then you can’t just act like a dick all the time and then claim not to hate me. You can’. You don’t. Fucking get to tug me along, knowingly or not. Making me lose sleep because I’m head-over-fucking-heels in love with you. And then claim that you don’t hate me, you giant motherfucker. I know you do, so fucking tell me already!“ yells Stiles, his mouth aching, tongue dry-

“I need you to fucking say it to my face, come on. I can take it, you know. I’m not a child, I can take-“

Derek snarls, cutting him off. Stiles blinks, startled out of his rant.

Derek inhales and closes his eyes and leans towards Stiles. He opens his eyes and exhales slowly, as if trying to calm himself. He opens his mouth to speak, and Stiles isn’t sure if he’s just imagining it, because Derek seems to be saying-

“Stiles. I love you.”

Stiles blinks some more. He can feel himself do his drowning goldfish impression again.

“I love you, Stiles, you dumbass. But you’re so young and so fragile and so much like me, like Kate, like Laura. I can’t… I need to protect you from myself. Because you can’t heal like me, like us. You can’t. Your bones break and your flesh tears. And I hate myself, because I can’t protect you, not all the time."

Stiles looks away, down at the ground; the grass seems to have become mighty interesting... and he may spontaneously combust if he looks at Derek, because _what the actual fuc_ -

“Look at me, Stiles, you giant dumbfuck. I. Love. You. But I know and you know that I’m the worst thing for you, yet you’re the only one for me. So I protect you, I stay away from you, before you get torn apart like a rag doll, before you get ripped in half… by me.”

Derek pauses and looks at Stiles again. His eyes are fully blown, pools of emotions, open to Stiles; tiny flecks of Alpha red bleeding through.

“I… Uh. I-“ and that’s as far as Stiles can get, because Derek getting closer and closer, his face centimetres away from Stiles’.

“I've never hated you. Forgive me.” Derek whispers; Stiles feels his breath catch in his throat.

And then Derek is kissing him, carefully, lips barely brushing his, like he’s afraid Stiles will startle like a deer.

His lips are chapped and dry, the way lips get when one worries them too much, and Stiles feels himself press back, mouth pliant and childish. Derek tastes like the slightly sour iron tang of blood, yet sweet, almost like an orange. His mouth is warm, as is his face.

“I don’t care. You can’t break me. I promise,” breathes Stiles between sweet gentle touches.

Their lips brush, and no more words are spoken, but something is broken and changed.

Stiles can feel it in his bones.

 

X

 

Stiles is twenty and Derek is twenty-seven.

They’re in bed, where they spend most of their free time, when Stiles is not studying, and when Derek is not working.

The sex is slow, languid; hips rolling together like gears, the perfect push and pull of Derek inside him.

“Why me?” says Stiles later, sated, body limp next to Derek’s.

“You’re my mate.”

“Oh?” says Stiles, one curved eyebrow raised, as if it’s a joke.

Derek looks at the man next to him and sits up, reaching for his wallet on the side table. He digs around in it and pulls out something and passes it to Stiles.

It’s a crumpled band aid with a fading Batman symbol.

Stiles smiles.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The ages are based on rough guesswork; ie: Jeff Davis' statement that Derek is actually older than we first thought, and the ages used in On Fire. 
> 
> Stiles' smell and Derek's taste/smell (-Oranges, in all my fic lol) are my headcanon.
> 
> Punctuation is the bane of my existence.
> 
> Edit: Changed some parts of the grave scene. Also upped the rating because _sex_ , just to be safe.


End file.
